Fiber
direction measurements in skeletal muscle DTI are limited by low precision
because of the low SNR of muscle diffusion-weighted MRI and the low
anisotropy of muscle diffusion tensor. However, in most skeletal muscles,
fibers have a preferential orientation. In the present work, a priori
assumptions about the dominant fiber orientation are used to derive
non-uniform diffusion encoding schemes that minimize the elliptical cone of
uncertainty. Simulations show that optimized schemes can decrease the fiber
direction uncertainty up to 37% relative to uniform schemes. Preliminary in
vivo results in the human tibialis anterior muscle are presented.